We put this list together to hopefully save you the time of repeating the research on vegan wood working products that we’ve already done.

4 Minute Read

The Foolinahurry Blog
by korzen designs

Since we starting selling our art, we’ve reached out to several manufactures and suppliers regarding whether their products contain animal derived ingredients or are tested on animals, and wanted to share what we found.

I won’t get into any of the why’s regarding a vegan lifestyle here, but as vegans who hardly make purchases without research, we found it challenging to find reliable information about most of the products that we use in our art, especially in regard to wood working supplies.

For the sake of keeping this simple, I’m going to assume that you realize that things like beeswax and leather strops are not vegan, and I’m only going to highlight the products that we’ve been able to confirm are vegan friendly, and not discuss the companies that aren’t vegan friendly, or those that gave us the runaround. We are not sponsored by or affiliated with any of these companies; we just like their products.
Here’s what we’ve learned:

Wood Stain and Wood Dye

Minwax

Minwax confirmed that their stains do not contain animal products and that they do not test them on animals. It’s worth noting that Minwax does sell “natural” bristle brushes for the application of their products. 

Keda Dye

Keda Dye confirmed that they do not personally test on any or use any animal parts in dye kits. They also make it clear on their website that they are an environmentally conscious company who does their best to protect the environment. 

Paint

There are many vegan friendly paints, and a lot of information about them you can find with minimal research. These are our favorites and what we currently prefer to use:

Plutonium Paint

Plutonium Paint make it clear on their faq page that their paint is vegan friendly. It is not tested on animals and there are no animal derived ingredients in the paint.

Design Master

Design Master’s environment page states that no animal sourced ingredients are used in their manufacturing and that they do not test their finished spray products or product ingredients on animals. They even go one step further, stating that they also do not purchase ingredients from sellers that test on animals.

Varnish and Polyurethane

Minwax

Minwax stated that their coatings do not contain animal products and that they do not test them on animals. As with their stains, it’s worth noting that Minwax does sell “natural” bristle brushes for the application of their products.

Wood Glue

Titebond II

Franklin International, the company that owns Titebond, confirmed that Titebond II does not contain any animal components and has never been tested on animals.

Tape

Shurtape/FrogTape

Shurtape, who owns FrogTape, confirmed that although their products are not labeled as vegan, no animal testing is performed on any Pressure Sensitive Tape manufactured by Shurtape or its subsidiaries. They also confirmed that animal products are not intentionally added or used in their manufacturing processes. 

Other Items

Baking Soda

We use baking soda to age the wood on some of our pieces. Some popular baking soda manufactures test their products on animals, but according to PETA, Bob’s Red Mill does not.

ECOS Paints

We have yet to try out ECOS Paints products in our work, but we did reach out to them and receive confirmation that although they are not vegan certified, they do not use animal products or test their products on animals. They not only produce paint, but also stains, finishes, and glues.

Homemade Stains and Dyes

We’ve experimented with some homemade stains and dyes like soaking steel wool in vinegar, which works well for achieving an aged wood color.

Steve Ramsey is a wood worker on YouTube, and great resource for experimenting with natural stains like coffee and tea, or blueberries and pomegranates.

Batteries

We are currently researching batteries, as we recently discovered that many batteries use gelatin in the manufacturing process.

Things to Consider

There’s definitely debate on whether one can truly be completely vegan in our current world and we continuously learn new information.
I think that it’s important to consider that there’s a reason companies often use verbiage like “not intentionally added”, “do not personally perform testing”, “to the best of our knowledge”, or  “based on current formulation and information” regarding animal ingredients and testing. I think it’s also worth considering that older companies that do not test on animals, probably did some animal testing at some point in the past. Without going on a tangent into a discussion on moral relativism, we try our best in both our art as well as our personal lives to only purchase and use cruelty free products, and are always striving to learn more; this is all we can hope others will do.  

Resources

PETA is a great source for information on vegan products and actually has a searchable database of companies that do and that don’t test their products on animals on their website.

Double Check Vegan is a useful resource for finding out if certain ingredients are vegan and they even have list of vegan art supplies on their website. 

Conclusion

We put this together to hopefully save you the time of repeating the research on vegan wood working products that we’ve already done, and we hope that you find this information helpful. 

Do you have any suggestions or recommendations on vegan products that you’ve used?

Let us know in the comments!